No Passing Fancy
UCLA quarterback Cade McNown is the Heisman Trophy frontrunner, but his attitude is still all about team.
By Rob Meich
Article from the Athlon Sports Football Annual (Pac 10 edition). You may purchase this magazine by contacting athlon@nashville.net. The price is $8.95 (including shipping and handling).
He tackles homework during delays at golf outings. He chooses not to date, using rare free time to bond with teammates and cultivate team chemistry. He coordinates all of his team's off-season workouts and drills.
A few weeks before turning 19, he strolled into his athletic director's office and recommended his own offensive coordinator for the vacant head-coaching job. Bob Toledo got the gig, and UCLA quarterback Cade McNown's assist didn't hurt.
It's the stuff leaders, and Heisman Trophy winners, are made of.
"I was impressed with his poise and the way he presented himself," says UCLA athletic director Pete Dalis. "He reminds me of a throwback to an older team.He's old-fashioned, and very impressive.He has a moxie you don't see often."
A favorite to win the school's second Heisman, McNown is resourceful, dependable and confident. He has a UCLA modern-era quarterback record of 31 starts in a row including two bowl games, and teammates call him Gumby because of his resiliency.
Ask him about his accomplishments, though, and McNown talks about others. Prod more, and he'll talk about his silly luck. Prod further, and he quotes Jeremiah, Chapter 9: "Don't let the wise man boast of his wisdom or the rich man boast of his riches. But let he who boasts, boast that he knows Me."
"That's theonly thing that matters, in the grand scheme of things," McNown, 21, says of his faith. "That's what matters to me.Anything else I have isn't even worth bragging about because I can't take that with me to the grave."
Perfection? Close. Until McNown's roommate, fullback Craig Walendy, has his say. McNown's room is as clean as a hospital, and all personal items are tucked away and neatly folded. "The guy even folds his underwear," Walendy says. McNown's desk is a tidy picture of organization. Pens go here, paper there.
The kitchen sink, however, is another story.Days-old macaroni lies on the counter; pot with crusty chili sits in the sink.
"His kitchen skills are a little...he doesn't like to do dishes, put it that way," Walendy says. "I don't think anyone does, but at some point you have to tell Cade to clean up his macaroni and cheese, and his chili dishes. He eats lots of chili and soup, stuff like that. It accumulates. I refuse to do those dishes."
Fortunately for the Bruins, his quarterbacking skills are much more tidy and efficient. McNown recorded the 12th-best efficiency rating in NCAA history in '97 with 168.6 while throwing for 2,877 yards, 22 touchdowns and just five interceptions.He attained a personal goal of a 60 percent completion rate, hitting 173-of-283 (61.1 percent). Including the Cotton Bowl game, McNown's passing yardage totaled 3,116.
No other UCLA quarterback had ever broken the 3,000-yard barrier in a season. Not bad for a junior who wasn't even thinking about a Division I-A scholarship after a tumultuous junior year in high school. "And here I am," McNown says, "with some great opportunities in front of me now."
The junior season is crucial to a prep athlete's future, in recruiting circles, but McNown played only four games before an emergency appendectomy sidelined him the rest of the year.
After his parents' divorce he moved to West Linn, Ore., with his mother for his senior season, where he led West Linn to the 4A semifinal game, throwing for 1,711 yards and 17 TDs. That drew interest from Washington and UCLA, among others, and McNown chose the school that Puyallup, Wash., product Brock Huard didn't.
At West Linn, McNown also earned Three Rivers League co-Defensive Player of the Year honors as a safety. He made 81 tackles, picking off four passes and causing a fumble. Once he implored UCLA reserve nose guard Darren Cline to watch a highlight tape of his senior prep season.
"As a safety, he brought the wood a little bit," says Cline, laughing. "Some pretty big hits for Oregon high school football."
Teammates often wince and grimace in film review sessions at shots that McNown takes, but he keeps bouncing back for more. Walendy figures he's seen McNown take at least one vicious shot in each UCLA game he's played.
Pillow fights prepared him to take a pounding. In his youth in Hollister, he and brother Jeff often went round after round with the goose down, sometimes swinging for an hour until one of the McNowns was knocked down.
"I've been blacked out and dizzy (by his brother's pillow swats)," Cade says. "That was a long time ago. But I've taken some good shots over the years in football, and you get accustomed to it."
"At times I'll think, `God, he ain't getting up. Send (reserve Drew) Bennett out.' And he pops up like he just got dragged down by an arm tackle," Walendy says. "It's amazing. I deliver blows, and I've felt if I ever took blows like that I'd have to lay there for a minute and count all my fingers and toes, make sure I got all my limbs on."
McNown's physical play, which has even included blocking on occasion, has toughened UCLA's image.
"I want to be a tough person," he says. "I don't like to get hit and wimp out, and not get up. I think a lot of guys notice that. I know our line does, and they appreciate it. Just like I appreciate them getting up when they get knocked down. We want to make sure we're all tough, all the way around."
UCLA finished its season with a 10-game winning streak, including a 29-23 victory over Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. That's when McNown was at his finest, engineering a comeback from a 16-point deficit that trails only Joe Montana's 1977 comeback in Cotton lore.
In contrast with his go-for- broke demeanor on the field, off it McNown is much more cautious and circumspect. He is constantly vigilant about the company he keeps, never putting himself in a compromising position. Homework is the usual highlight of his night life, not including chili.He doesn't even answer his phone.
"I don't think everyone on the team is like him," Toledo says. "I know his priorities don't include a girl.He's real busy trying to be a student and an athlete, and he works extremely hard."
McNown says almost everything he does is for the sake of team chemistry. That leaves scant time for indiscretions that might jeopardize the critical balance of the team's psyche.
"I've become very skeptical about people who try to enter my life and be a part of my life at this point," McNown says. "I don't want to be a jaded guy, but at the same time you have to be wary of people who want to be friends.You stay guarded. You don't want to surround yourself with people who are throwing rose petals down for you.
"There's nothing wrong with that, but you know who the people are who will be there if you are in a wheelchair for the rest of your life."
Toledo, for one, will be there. He is as close to a father figure as McNown has ever had in his life.
Colorado coach Rick Neuheisal, Northwestern coach Gary Barnett and Kansas State coach Bill Snyder were considered for the UCLA opening. But McNown figured UCLA had its next coach already on staff, and he told Dalis of Toledo's brilliant offensive mind, his strong rapport with the players and what he had learned from Toledo.
McNown said he was cool and calm when he walked up to the second story of the J.D. Morgan Center.
"I just felt that I had a say as much as anybody about what kind of coach we were looking for," he says. "The players are the ones who have to deal with it. I felt I had the right."
Toledo and McNown have become extremely close in a relatively short time. Even so, Toledo is tough on McNown, which accounts for the quarterback's steadiness in any situation, including the Heisman Hype sweeping Westwood.
"Maybe I just realize that all this stuff going on right now, it's a passing thing," McNown says. "I want to embrace everything that's going on, the friendships I have on this team and these opportunities. It's special for me, but in comparison to some of the bigger things in life, you have to have perspective, and I think I have perspective. At the same time, I realize there will be another guy like me coming up in another year or two."
That's not very likely. With another season to go, he's already tops on the school charts with 7,238 passing yards, 7,633 total yards and 487 completions. With eight more touchdown passes, he will pass Tom Ramsey as No. 1 in that category.
Michigan coach Lloyd Carr spotted McNown's special attributes while watching film of the lefty early in the '96 season, speculating that McNown would develop into a "great" quarterback and noting his special ability to improvise.
"He's a guy back there who, when things break down, can make a lot of things happen," Carr says.
Ryan Fien, then the starting quarterback, saw enough of McNown's abilities early in '95 to know his fate, and he transferred out of UCLA after that season. Top reserve Steve Buck bolted a year later.
Then-coach Terry Donahue had rarely seen anyone like McNown, who, without the benefit of a spring practice, grasped the basics of Toledo's intricate system and showed immense promise. On Sundays, Donahue always found a lone figure in the film room already dissecting Saturday's games. McNown.
"He's a Type-A person," Toledo says. "His motor is constantly running, and he doesn't calm down. He's always doing something, like that quick-kick thing. One day at practice, he said, `Coach, watch me kick.' Sure enough, he kicked well."
His three quick kicks have all sailed more than 60 yards, including a 76-yarder in the Cotton Bowl.
McNown played in his first college football game just five weeks after arriving, before he'd even attended a class.He completed 9-of-18 passes for 91 yards in relief of a battered Fien in a victory over BYU in Provo.
Donahue told McNown at halftime that he was going in, to which McNown giggled a bit and looked around. "Not nervous at all," says Cline. "Intense, but he's never been easily shaken or jittery."
He started a week later, losing to Oregon 38-31 at the Rose Bowl. Two weeks later, he became the permanent starter after he helped beat Fresno State by throwing for 306 yards.
McNown directed the Bruins to touchdowns on their first three drives against USC that season, and a late, third down, 2-yard scramble for a first down enabled UCLA to extinguish a late rally from the Trojans. That play alone told Dalis, an ardent football fan and former team manager, that McNown would be a gamer.
"That was huge. He has a real passion for the game and for making people miss," Dalis says. "He's so dedicated. Coaches always tell me how you don't have to tell him things twice. And he's very self-effacing. It's hard for him to take a compliment when you compliment him on a good game, and I like that about him."
Mastering Toledo's complex offense did not come easily. He threw 16 interceptions and 12 touchdowns during a 5-6 sophomore season, then buckled down last summer to get everyone on the same page.
Throughout 1997, McNown understood patterns, options and reads better, and his teammates understood him. Tailback Skip Hicks dropped eight passes in '96, but he didn't let any fall through his hand last season after McNown drilled him relentlessly in the off-season.
"The challenge for me this year is to play my game and not start thinking that things will open up when I think they'll open up. Continue to read defenses, be smart and make good decisions," McNown says. "I have to take each play as a new one."
McNown is aiming to complete 65 percent of his passes this season and again cross the 3,000-yard threshold. Should he accomplish those goals, it's likely UCLA will be in fine position for a Pac-10 title and a shot at a national championship.
But McNown is nonchalant about the Heisman.
"I have to do the things I'm asked to do to help move the ball down the field," McNown says. "If that means I hand it off 50 times a game, fine. Really, our offense isn't set up to win trophies. It's set up to win games."
As a freshman and sophomore, McNown noticed that UCLA would set itself up for falls. Distinct, team-wide letdowns always followed victories, producing a 12-11 record his first two season. Those letdowns are past.
"Last year, we wanted to prove something each week," he says. "You can get overconfident and think you'll just go out there and win, but that hasn't been the attitude of the team. You have to aim high. Most people don't aim high, and miss. Others aim too low, and hit. I'd rather shoot for the stars."
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